The Parrot

If I had known the camera was coming out I would have washed up.

Elliott continues to enjoy life as much as we enjoy him.  I've never been a big fan of birds, especially pet birds, but I now officially own one - a parrot by the name of Elliott.  If he can't repeat every single word you say, it isn't for his lack of trying.  I think we realized this one night last week when I brought him home from Grandma and Grandpa's house.  He walked through the door and mama greeted him with "Hi big guy."  His response without pause - "Hi big guy."  The concept of don't say anything you wouldn't want repeated has become the guiding philosophy of our household - of course this has ALWAYS been the guiding philosophy - we just have an added incentive to adhere to it.

His favorite truck is no longer the BiiiG Truck, but now the Dump Truck.  He has seen many of them driving the roads in Grandma and Grandpa's neighborhood and began to accurately identify them on the roads we travel.  Last week he began to use his building blocks to assemble structures that in his mind I guess resembled a dump truck.  When he would complete the project, after clapping for himself, he looked at mama and I while pointing and proclaimed "dump truck."   This may have been his first attempt at manipulation, a successful attempt at that, for he now owns a large plastic dump truck and a piece of heavy loading equipment to go along with it.  It only took me mentioning to his grandma that I was going to have to get him one this weekend and he was suddenly the proud owner of the biggest and shiniest diesel Big Lots had to offer. 

The trucks, along with the box of goodies from his Ohio Grandma this week, keep the spoiling alive - a spoiling we are very grateful for.